people that come through, are usually amused by the quiz. Surely this is a biased selection, but it's not all the doom and gloom you portray it to be.

The selection isn't only biased - it's strongly systematically confounded. To stay with my theme of inadequate analogies: "It's like making a telephone survey to ask people whether they like participating in telephone surveys. Wow, almost everyone loves it!".

That's where your reasoning is flawed. It should be: "Wow, almost everybody participates!" If you'd ask people whether they truly liked it, you'd get different numbers as most people are polite not to hang up immediately once they realize it's a survey. If you'd record people making positive statements during the survey, regarding said survey without being asked on the matter, the numbers would be even lower, and merely biased, as opposed to 'strongly systematically confounded'.

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This forum is a private service offered for free. If Riven would like a new user to upload a movie of him or her singing a christmas song to prove that he or she is not a bot that would be perfectly allowable Answering a couple of questions such as the registration activation quiz is such a minor effort compared to the value you get that I really do not see what the problem is. Anyone too lazy to google the answers to a few questions is most likely too lazy to be serious about game development anyway.

people that come through, are usually amused by the quiz. Surely this is a biased selection, but it's not all the doom and gloom you portray it to be.

The selection isn't only biased - it's strongly systematically confounded. To stay with my theme of inadequate analogies: "It's like making a telephone survey to ask people whether they like participating in telephone surveys. Wow, almost everyone loves it!".

That's where your reasoning is flawed. It should be: "Wow, almost everybody participates!" If you'd ask people whether they truly liked it, you'd get different numbers as most people are polite not to hang up immediately once they realize it's a survey. If you'd record people making positive statements during the survey, regarding said survey without being asked on the matter, the numbers would be even lower, and merely biased, as opposed to 'strongly systematically confounded'.

There are many effects that play into those sort of things - way too many to mention them all - but in *general*, results do indeed tend to go into such directions as I discribed. 3 small examples:- People usually won't admit they didn't like something they did out of their own free will (or will even change their opinion and believe they enjoyed it), because doing something they don't like (without being paid more than they usually expect for similar tasks or time investments) is something that creates cognitive dissonance (and stuff). - Also generally "anonymous" people are not "polite" when they feel they are "being inconvenienced". They don't only "hang up" - they take all the free candy from the desk and smear the walls with ketchup before they go if it seems to them like there is NO chance at all they could get caught / identified (also, afterwards they keep on running down the street even if you run after them yelling: "Wait, You're not in trouble! That was part of the study! We just need you to read this final statement for ethical purposes, then you will get your 5$!")- And last but not least: People will only very rarely admit they did not like something (anything!) once they are part of a group where this something is a prerequisite of some sort. (You can fake a little bit of that effect btw if you're telling someone on phone survey, that his answers are being recorded as "examples" for future subjects to the same survey or something like that). They tend to either avoid becoming part of the group or start "liking" everything (semi-relevant) about the group. Or at least pretending to. ... and stuff like that. Don't get me wrong, it's still all just an ad-hoc educated guess and I could be totally misjudging the sum of all "effects" in any single situation. But usually I'm not too far off... most of the time.

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If I ignore complaints, I'd come across as

...someone who quotes with "tactically adjusted" context? xD You do still remember, that that wasn't something I called you (but an example taken from a random older post on the topic, from someone else, who also only used it as an example), right?

(just checking *g*)

Also you're totally allowed to ignore complaints if you dislike that activity. There's always enough people on the Internet who enjoy to argue... many webmasters just wait for an angry mob to form + overwhelm minority opinions before they do anything. Might sound like a bad strategy at first, but afterwards when everyone is already too frustrated to "put up a fight" they can still fast-read and make up their own opinion from unique / still semi-neutral standpoint - and all that without having to type anything. It works just fine most of the time.

People will only very rarely admit they did not like something (anything!) once they are part of a group where this something is a prerequisite of some sort.

It's kinda paints a grim picture if you believe that people sending me PMs about how they enjoyed the activation quiz are merely doing that due to social pressure to fit in. That was my point after all: unprovoked positive feedback. That's a totally different thing than a mildly positive response on an inquiry.

...someone who quotes with "tactically adjusted" context? xD You do still remember, that that wasn't something I called you (but an example taken from a random older post on the topic, from someone else, who also only used it as an example), right?

Heh, you can't distance yourself from such remarks that easily. It's a common tactic, often seen in interviews / in journalism: you have this opinion of somebody but for the sake of having an informed discussion, you know it's not prudent to call it in their face, but make up an fictional group, and taking fictional quotes from them, to smoothen the conversation accompanied with a subtle bit of backstabbing.

From your average televised interview, this is the underlying question:

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It seems from the lack of compassion for the people that suffer from your fraud that you are a psychopath. Are you?

The question that is asked by the interviewer:

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Some people say that your lack of compassion for the people that suffer from your fraud, shows that you are a psychopath, what would you say to these people?

It's a dirty little trick, and very hard to counter, without elaborately explaining what is happening, as if you'd simply recognize this trick and refuse to answer, it comes across as you can't take criticism.

Just as easily, I can make up this fictional group of people that agree with me, disagree with you, and take quotations like:

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people complaining endlessly about things that are merely inconveniences for the greater good are total douchebags

and then 'remind you', that when you quote my fictional quote, that these are not my words. Surely, logically this is defendable, but socially not so much.

Don't get me wrong, it's still all just an ad-hoc educated guess and I could be totally misjudging the sum of all "effects" in any single situation. But usually I'm not too far off... most of the time.

You're practising theory, I'm dealing with reality. Observational evidence shows that my solution to the problem is effective, and it seems we have the luxury to reject people we deem not having the right mindset to join the community, without feeling adverse effects.

I hope this thread is useful in a way, like making people look for that new [ignore] feature I added recently.

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People will only very rarely admit they did not like something (anything!) once they are part of a group where this something is a prerequisite of some sort.

It's kinda paints a grim picture if you believe that people sending me PMs about how they enjoyed the activation quiz are merely doing that due to social pressure to fit in. That was my point after all: unprovoked positive feedback. That's a totally different thing than a mildly positive response on an inquiry.

What makes you think I believe that? How does my statement in any way contradict the presence of different people who honestly like the same thing very much?

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Heh, you can't distance yourself from such remarks that easily. It's a common tactic, often seen in interviews / in journalism

Actually I can. Because we ARE talking about "impressions people might get when they see the quiz", which makes the comment an EXAMPLE, not a (potentially fake) SOURCE. Your benevolent motivation behind the design of the Quiz was never in question or the topic. If I wanted to use "television diversion tactics", I would have to write something like: "Some people say, that some people don't like your quiz", to distance myself from my opinion about the quiz. And that would be confusing. Which is why I won't do that xD

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Just as easily, I can make up this fictional group of people

Wait, what fictional group of people are we talking about now? I was quoting the fictional people from page 1 :3

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You're practising theory, I'm dealing with reality.

Ah, I see where this is going. But you are NOT dealing with reality. You are dealing with your perception. I know that sounds overused and silly, but perception is a b*tch. And that's why I'm trying to bring things that might be hard to perceive to your attention.

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and it seems we have the luxury to reject people we deem not having the right mindset to join the community, without feeling adverse effects.

How do you know you're not feeling adverse effects? How could such effects manifest?

and it seems we have the luxury to reject people we deem not having the right mindset to join the community, without feeling adverse effects.

How do you know you're not feeling adverse effects? How could such effects manifest?

I deliberately said that I wasn't feeling adverse affects. How I know that for a fact? Well, because I'm not feeling it. It's indeed all about perception.

I was trying to suggest, that it might be possible that some negative effects you are feeling (or absence of some positive ones) and attributing to something else could theoretically be originating from people that simply just misunderstood what the quiz is for and you would never know. But...:

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Yadda yadda yadda

I'm out! I've got more money to make for Cas.

...that's a valid solution too, of course, if you don't have time to waste on discussing "potential minor optimization with unclear outcome".

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Thanks for the reminder. I almost would have fed this troll, which would have been a mistake.

Close enough... but I think you still need to practice "Not feeding trolls". You know - because comments like that technically qualify as "feeding the troll". Just in case a real one ever drops by here who's not just trying to give (unwanted xD but still good ) advice while he's waiting for his compiler to finish.

I have to admit, Riv, when I saw the activation quiz at first; I thought of it as an annoying hurdle to cross to be accepted into a forum. However, after passing the quiz, I found it to be completely in context since this is not a "gaming" forum, but more of a "game development" forum.

Game developers are actually supposed to be taking extra hurdles to progress. If you can't do that, then how will you get good enough to solve problems. Inadvertently, Riv is just filling the forums with people he would want to associate himself with, and pre-screening the rest.

Now, that might seem like a bad thing because you are getting rid of "potentially" good forum members. However, with every 1 good forum member turned off by the message, the amount of bad ones turned off is significantly greater. Cuts down on a lot of spam, useless questions, and garbage threads.

It makes prominent residents of the forum feel better, and less prone to leave if the place is kept clean and tidy. Regardless of which members you don't get, you always want to keep those members who are able to give meaningful feedback. It makes these forums a well structured library, instead of a corner pawn shop.

Maybe it just takes a little while to see "the big picture." Great forums are inhabited by great people.

The best method, that i have ever come across, for combating spammers has always been the 'riddle picture' method. Basically, you program a system to output a image (not text) that says something along the lines of 'the first letter in 'Maddison', the second letter in 'box', and blah blah blah.

Because it works similar to multiple captas, and because it tells you to look for a specific letter, so long as you have the image ideas generated at random (so they can't be connected to the answer), it makes it impossible to bot though it.

The best method, that i have ever come across, for combating spammers has always been the 'riddle picture' method. Basically, you program a system to output a image (not text) that says something along the lines of 'the first letter in 'Maddison', the second letter in 'box', and blah blah blah.

Because it works similar to multiple captas, and because it tells you to look for a specific letter, so long as you have the image ideas generated at random (so they can't be connected to the answer), it makes it impossible to bot though it.

If you read through the thread the problem is not bots, the problem is human spammers that actually google for the answers. That must be a very giving line of work...

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